Burn the Books: A Modest Proposal for Those Touched by Suicide or Self Harm
In an age of cheap publishing, some books deserve to be burned.
I’m writing this morning to get something off my chest. This is no exercise in creativity or beauty. I’ll get back to that in the coming week.
Thank you for your attention to this piece. It’s important to me.
1.
Fire is a convenient thing.
I imagine the first fire this way: A slender finger of lightning reached down, touched the ground, and set the forest floor ablaze; fire cooked everything, created chaos among the tribes; the rain set in, the conflagratin subsided, and some young cave dweller made his way to the smoldering remains, found a coal, and blew it to life. There, man harnessed the power of fire.
Fire became warmth, a means to preserve, a way to dispose of bacteria. Over time, fire evolved by the application of imagination. We’ve used it to fuel industry, conquer enemies, melt gold, and send a man to the moon. We’ve packed it in tiny projectiles and used it as a means of murder. Yesterday, a deranged maniac attempted to use a tiny fire to dismantle a political movement, killing an innocent bystander in the process.
Fire—our relationship with the devourer is complicated. Take, for instance, the ways we use it to dispose of ideas.
Books of pretended prophecies (by Roman Authorities)
In 186 BC, in an effort to suppress the Bacchanalia practices that had been led in part by Minius Cerrinius, a consul of Rome claimed that the fathers and grandfathers of the Romans had suppressed foreign rites and ceremonies, "seeking out and burning all books of pretended prophecies."1
See the Romans piling up books, douseing them with rendered lard, setting the prophecies ablaze. See them trying to burn an entire corpus of thought.
Sorcery scrolls (by early converts to Christianity at Ephesus)
About the year 55 according to the New Testament book of Acts, early converts to Christianity in Ephesus who had previously practiced sorcery burned their scrolls: "A number who had practised sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas." (Acts 19:19, NIV)
What is a book if not a collection of ideas? What are ideas if not threats to some way of life, some prevailing ideology?
Catholic theological works (by Martin Luther)
At the instruction of Reformer Martin Luther, a public burning of books was held in the public square outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate on December 10, 1520. Together with the papal bull of Excommunication Exsurge Domine, issued against Luther himself, were burned works which Luther considered as symbols of Catholic orthodoxy – including the Code of Canon Law, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Angelica, Angelo Carletti's work on Scotist theology.
Fire is the friend of the facist.
Jewish, anti-Nazi and "degenerate" books (by the Nazis)
The works of some Jewish authors and other so-called "degenerate" books were burnt by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. Richard Euringer, director of the libraries in Essen, identified 18,000 works deemed not to correspond with Nazi ideology, which were publicly burned.
Fire is a friend of the Christian Nationalists, too.
Tennessee Global Vision Bible Church book burning and subsequent Bible burning
On February 2, 2022, Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, led a book burning event with attendees also throwing books and other media into the fire. The burning was livestreamed on Facebook. The burn pile was fed partially with dozens of wood forklift pallets. At one point Locke claimed that the fire department was trying to put the fire out but his security team was successfully blocking their access. Along with contributions from the crowd, a dumpster full of books was unveiled and burned by Locke and attendees. Locke claimed it was his and the churches "biblical right" to "burn....cultic materials that they deem are a threat to their religious rights and freedoms and belief systems."
There is nothing I hate as much as people burning books. Books comprise a record of history, human thought, and novel ideas. The way I see it, burning books is anathema—mostly.
Mostly?
Hear me out. Some books are good fuel for fire.
2.
This week, a friend sent a page from a Christian Guide to overcoming depression. He’d received it from a kind-hearted but dim-witted person whose love for easy answers was matched only by their myopic understanding of mental health. The Guide issued a reductionist warning attempting to persuade readers against the ultimate act of self-harm. The warning: Suicide is a sin.
Perhaps there’s theological merit to the statement. But there are some merits best left unsaid. Some theological statements are so emotionally unhelpful that they might do more harm than good.
In 2021, I stood on the front porch of a renthouse. I was part of a small group of friends of the deceased, a man who’d taken his life at the end of a particularly dark season. We swept through the house, and as we did, I found numerous sheets of a particularly dark piece of music tucked away in drawers, hidden under the bed, taped to the inside of cabinets. (I’ll not name the piece out of respect for both my friend and the band.) The piece—a sort of requiem for a life—opened a door, a portal into my friend’s noggin. In the days before his death, he was beyond reason, sinking into the mud of despair, unable to breathe. He did not need easy theological answers. He needed hope.
I thought a lot about this old friend when I received a page from the Christian Guide. My first thought: If someone had given him this book a year before his death, he would have pulled the trigger a year sooner.
3.
In an age of easy words, emotionally vacuous theology, and on-demand publishing, there are far too many books offering far too many easy answers. (Substack is littered with them.) Those easy answers gut the emotional reality of living, which can be summed up this way: Life is difficult; the way is hard; there are real monsters; few of us will make it out untouched by the dark.
And so, I propose a book burning.
Round up the Christian Guides. Make a pile. Douse them in kerosene. Set them ablaze. Invite the struggling. Invite the therapists, emotionally available priests and pastors, and theologians who think more like Solomon and less like Greg Locke (see above), too. Let the people tend to the people. As you watch the easy answers burn, send a clear message to those on the razor’s edge: Your life is beautiful, even in the darkest times.
4.
If you are struggling with self-harm, you are not alone. There is help. Call 988, the National Suicide hotline. Reach out to a therapist. Phone a friend.
If you are friends with someone in the throes of depression, reach out to them today. Say, “I’m sorry and I love you.” Ask what they need. Invite them to coffee or dinner or for an evening smoke. Let them know they are a meaningful part of your life. Help them find help. Be a tiny fire. Give them what light you can.
In all things peace,
Seth
All quotes taken from the Wikipedia page on book burning found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-burning_incidents
This resonates. Like you, I’m generally opposed to book burning. But there are some that perpetuate violence (to our souls) in the name of God that should most definitely be burned. Someone gave me a similar book to the guide you’re writing of here, only it was on the topic of miscarriage not mental health. It was so horrible—the theology, the message, the fact that it made it into the world at all. Even in my grief I was furious that it was in print. It was actually the catalyst for me to decide I would, indeed, write Grace Like Scarlett and pursue publishing it. Feeding hurting people garbage is negligent and cruel. Placating them with religious untruths is blasphemous and corrupt. There are books that should cease to be available. I’m genuinely not sure how to reconcile this belief with my belief that freedom of ideas and press is essential. Who gets to create the filter? Who gets to keep the gate?